The View from the Onion
by Moon's Embrace
Summary: Part of my 'View From...' Series. The Pikmin don't always love Olimar. See what happens. R&R!


**This is written from the POV of a Pikmin, going into the onion after a long day of following Olimar.**

-----Pikmin-----Pikmin-----Pikmin-----Pikmin-----Pikmin-----

"Come on guys! We're going to leave without you!" I called from my spot on the ship. It had been a long day, and I didn't plan on waiting for anyone. "Are they on yet?" I asked my second in command, a bud I had picked myself.

"Yes sir," he said, putting his arm up in a salute.

"Very good. Buckle up, everyone! As soon as the large one sends his ship up, we follow!" I called back through the ship.

We are the Pikmin, a semi-plant species of an alien planet. One day, a man named Olimar – known by us as 'the large one' because he has the **biggest** head any of us have ever seen – came down from the sky in a severely damaged spaceship, named the 'Dolphin'. I was the first Pikmin he found, a simple seed. He plucked me out of the ground, and I thanked him by following him so we could build up an army. He needed parts to his ship that had apparently detached themselves in the atmosphere and spread across the world. Olimar himself was too weak to collect the parts, so enlisted me and my men, the Red Division Pikmin first, then the Yellow Division, and finally Blue Division Pikmin.

Granted, I am not leader to all three groups of Pikmin. Gen. Wattson is the head of the Yellow Division, and Capt. Finn is the head of the Blue Division. The three of us have become good friends, as any team should be. Each Division of the Pikmin Armada has a special ability that they have picked up through the generations. Us, the Red Division, is impervious to fire. The Yellow Division is impervious to electricity, and the Blue Division loves the water.

Every day, we wake and anywhere from 5 to 100 of us are extricated from the Onion, our ship. We are then toted around the world, usually only small portions at a time by Olimar. We search with him for his ship pieces.

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Today, it was my squadron of 40 that Olimar took with him into a dark cave. This cave… this was where we met up with the Blue Division, but we were back again. Olimar dragged us down into the deepest depths of the darkness. He seemed to know where we were going, but none of us did.

As we came to a clearing, Olimar slowed down. I glanced around him, seeing nothing but a large mushroom ahead of us in the dimly illuminated clearing.

"We got this, guys. It's just a little fungus," I laughed. I was confident in the power of my team. "Wait for the mark."

Olimar whistled us to attention, and then began tossing us onto the top of the mushroom. As soon as I, the first into battle, landed, I started smacking the rubbery surface beneath me with my head. That was the only weapon we Pikmin had. The mushroom instantly started wiggling under the few Pikmin on top.

"Sir! The mushroom!" I heard a call near me. In between smacks, I saw that my second in command was next to me on the mushroom's head.

"It's alive, yes," I said, as calmly as I could. "It's all that can truly be expected. I think I'm going to drop and hit the legs."

I let go of the handhold I had found on the fungus's top, and fell with a small cry to the floor at the mushroom's feet. I quickly shook it off and ran to the feet of the mushroom. I heard the whistle of Olimar, and looked back to him, but I had to keep going, despite the worried look in his eyes. I kept going, and I heard the battle cries above me. I looked up into the umbrella of the mushroom's top, seeing it rise and pouches along the tines of the umbrella pattern fill.

Before I could call out in surprise, it pushed a fine purple powder onto me in a sort of sneezing motion. I could feel my body changing, and looked down to see that I had turned a purple-black color, and my mind was starting to cloud over. I heard my mouth cry out in a foreign tongue before I blacked out.

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I awoke later that night, seeing nothing but darkness around me. I tried to move, but found myself bruised and battered. I was back to my normal red, I could see. I was bleeding from a small cut on my forehead, but otherwise I seemed to be in one piece. I slowly stood and looked around me. I was still standing in the clearing where the battle had been, and I could still see a tinge of purple in the air. The mushroom was nowhere to be seen, but neither was Olimar. In horror, I began to retrace my steps, looking at the ground for the footprints of the large one or my squadron. I found a trail of deeper steps, like the Pikmin who had made them were laden with something.

'_Good,'_ I thought in mild contempt, '_they found something in that stupid mushroom thing.'_

I kept walking, rubbing my sore left arm and limping slightly. The sizes of the bruises were the right size for a Pikmin. The only logical conclusion was that my own men had beaten me. I saw the Onions close by, and ran straight for them. I knew it was getting late, and anyone who wasn't there was left behind. I got to the clearing to find it empty but the four ships. There was one Red Division Pikmin standing near the leg of the Red Onion, looking very sad. I hobbled over, not announcing my presence.

"Oh, Sgt. Tinder," the Pikmin was lamenting, "why'd you have to go against orders?" He held up his hands and stared at them for a moment. "I beat you, without question," he said quietly, "I was with others, but I beat you to death, left you lying in that clearing, alone."

I watched for a few more seconds in surprise. Olimar had commanded my own men to kill me. And they had come very close to that. I put an arm gently on his shoulder. "It's okay, man," I said quietly. "You were just following orders."

The Pikmin on the ground looked up slowly, not recognizing me right away. His eyes searched my face for a second, then widened in surprise as he realized who I was. "Sir! I thought you were- I mean, we left you," he stammered, hurriedly standing and hugging me.

"I just woke up," I said, pushing him off of me sorely. My arm was stinging heavily in pain, hanging limply next to me. "I came back just in time, it appears."

As I stood watching, Olimar marched back into the clearing with my Pikmin. They were carrying the top of the mushroom and a part to the ship. I had hidden behind a bush nearby; I was supposed to be dead after all. The Pikmin carried the mushroom to the Onion, and the part to the ship. They seemed excited to have accomplished something, but quickly became somber. I looked out of the bushes to see Sgt. Flint, my second in command, talking to the troops. He had a hand over his heart, speaking with tears in his eyes. Olimar had already moved on, coming over to the onion to pick my brothers in arms out of the ground. When he had finished with them, he glanced over to his ship. He saw the Pikmin standing there, so he called them to attention and sent them into the Onion. He wasn't paying attention, so I snuck onto the Onion with my men, hoping none of them had seen me. A few of the Pikmin around me stopped and fell to the ground, walking back to Olimar. He had called them back for a separate mission, and they walked away slowly, not really wanting to go. I climbed the rest of the way into the Onion and moved around the edges of the crowd, staying out of sight the best way possible. There were less today then usual, but not by much.

I quickly found Sgt. Flint near the control panel, absently staring at my chair. He wasn't talking to himself like the other had been, so I approached him.

"Sgt. Flint, can I ask you something?" I tried to keep my voice disguised slightly. He didn't even look up.

"No. I need time alone right now," he said quietly, turning his head away and closing his eyes against the tears I could see welling up.

"It's very important, sir," I said, letting my real voice slip on the last word. His eyes closed tighter.

"Sure, fine. What do you need?" He looked into my face, and his brow furrowed when he saw my injuries. "What happened to you?" He asked in surprise.

"My own men beat me nearly to death," I let my voice become its full self again.

His eyes widened. He shook his head and took a step back, gaping. "Sir, I- I thought you were," he stammered, but didn't finish the sentence.

"Dead? Me too."

"How did you survive? There were about ten of us on you!" He said, pulling me into a hug. He was sobbing now.

I pushed him away painfully. "I figured as many. I'm sore all over, I think my arm's broken, an I'm pretty sure I don't have my blossom up there anymore.

"I am so sorry, sir. You were going after Olimar, we had no choice," he wiped at his eyes and smiled.

I shook my head and gave him a light punch in the arm. "Let's get out of here," I said, sitting in my chair.

"We can't, not yet. We have to wait for Olimar," his grin slid off his face at my scowl. "Sir, he is our leader, like it or not."

"I know, Flint, I know," I said, putting an arm to my head to check the wound, which was still bleeding. "How long we got 'till sundown?" I asked, not really able to read the timepiece above the panel of glowing buttons.

"Not long. About a minute," Flint said, taking his place next to me. I saw a couple Pikmin straggling into the camp, and called to them. It had been a long day, and I didn't plan on waiting for anyone.


End file.
